Travel Journal

Bladder Balls

(Tuesday 17 November 2015) by Rick Clot

So I had an appointment with my doctor a few weeks ago to discuss a problem I've been having for the last few months, mostly after softball games, and that is a discoloration of the urine. It seems to range from a hearty yellow to a rust brown depending on how active I was in the game. The more hits I got and the more base running I did, the darker the urine became. He referred me to a urologist who sent me for a CT scan of the kidneys, an EKG and a chest Xray. But the really fun part was when he had to do a cystoscopy. For the total layman, which I included myself in that group up until about a week ago, a cystoscopy is where they go up into the bladder with a camera on a stick that feels like the size of New Mexico, to look around. And they take the short route if you know what I mean. I'd like to be able to tell you they took the long route but that would be stretching the truth a bit. First the nurse comes in to prep you. That was a fun experience. I'm laying on the table with nothing more than a giant napkin covering my nether region. The nurse, who bore a striking resemblance to Berta the housekeeper from Two and a Half Men and looked like she could make a freight train take a dirt road on a rainy night, immediately took matters into her own hands. She didn't even dim the lights or open a bottle of wine. How insensitive!! Then the doc came in, did the procedure as delicately as possible (let your imagination run wild with that one) and informed me I had a bladder stone the size of a golf ball to which I replied, "Ah that's where my last drive went. I thought I hit it good but that's probably why I couldn't find the ball." So this Friday I'm scheduled for outpatient surgery. They'll put me under and go in with a laser to blast it out of the sky much like Luke did with the Death Star in Star Wars. I'll probably be on light duty for a couple weeks which means I won't have to work on Thanksgiving. Hooray! There's a bright side to everything.